Weber / Ciani,Dino - Pezzi per piano solo - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

This presents a selection of his works for piano. From the reminiscent Alghe (or 'seaweed'), which features a delicate melody over shimmering Debussy- like harmonies, to Le stagioni ('The Seasons') and I naviganti ('The Sailors'), Castelnuovo-Tedesco was a master at creating evocative images of provincial life through his music. His longer, more virtuosic works take on grander themes; Alt Wien is described as a 'Viennese rhapsody', and Piedigrotta takes us through a whirlwind of Neapolitan music, starting with a dark and pulsating tarantella, after which the music sinks gently into an undulating rhythm to evoke the image of a moonlit Neapolitan evening. Le danze del Re David reveal an unexpectedly hard edge to the composer, turning dark and violent, with movement names such as 'rapid and savage' and 'warlike Allegro', finally culminating in a 'clear and solemn' conclusion.

As a teacher of theory and composition at the Milan Conservatory in Rome, Bruno Bettinelli (1913-2004) had a decisive influence on the careers of Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Chailly, Riccardo Muti and Maurizio Pollini. At least outside his native Italy, his work as a teacher has overshadowed his own music, which is now being recognised as the output of a distinctive voice in the generation between Luigi Dallapiccola and modernist pioneers such as Luigi Nono. Like his chamber music, however, Bettinelli's piano music also reveals a debt to the instrumental composers at the turn of the last century who worked against the grain in this land of lyric and song men such as Casella, Malipiero and Ghedini, all of them represented on Brilliant Classics with important revivals of chamber and piano music. Bettinelli deserves his place alongside them, as a first listen to the bold Fantasia will make clear. Composed in 1955, the five sections of the Fantasia make free use of tonality in the context of post- Romantic writing for the piano that presents a challenge to the most accomplished technique; one which Chiara Cipelli overcomes with flying colours. The most ambitious work on the album, the Fantasia is preceded by the more picaresque charms of a three-movement Suite agreste and followed by two contrasting collections of miniatures, the 18 Easy Pieces from 1941 - owing something to neoclassical Hindemith - and the 10 exquisite fragments which make up Sintesi. Written in 1970, Sintesi distils Bettinelli's own adoption of atonal technique to it's most poetic essence. Chiara Cipelli is herself active as a teacher, as a professor of piano in Cremona and Reggio Emilia, but also maintains a busy performing career, with concerts across Europe and the US and a repertoire that places emphasis on the music of our time.

Eugen Cicero - Solo Piano / Re- of Eugen Cicero ´s first and only solo recording with new artwork. - This album by gifted Romanian pianist Eugen Cicero was recorded during Hungary's Debrecen Jazz Days in September 1978, but the tapes remained in the archives until 2004 when a Slovenian collector discovered them. Cicero was pursuing two aims with this program first, to use classical piano music as the basic material for swinging improvisations, and second, to present ballads and up-tempo jazz standards, employing the resources of a classical pianist.